


Closer

by topdollarwitch



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Coming of Age tale, Friends to Lovers, M/M, POV Alternating, Pining, Slow Burn, otabek feelings, sad shit probably, teenage masturbation, the story of the Boys, yuri feelings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-24
Updated: 2018-01-23
Packaged: 2019-01-22 11:17:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12480324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/topdollarwitch/pseuds/topdollarwitch
Summary: Over years, months, days, and minutes, they come together.





	1. Chapter 1

_”And sitting with Babicheva is Men’s Juniors newcomer Yuri Plisetsky, just thirteen years old. He’s already being hailed as the next Viktor Nikiforov after outstanding success in the rookie circuit, though how he fares on an international level remains to be seen.’_

Otabek stares at the pre-Algebra notes on the low, mahogany-and-frosted-glass coffee table. He wills himself to not look up. He knows perfectly well there’s little meaning to this restraint; it is akin to saving the most delicious bite on one’s plate for last, or retracing footprints already left in snow.

Otabek glances to his cousin Dio, who is sprawled the couch across the room. It’s not like Dio knows who Yuri Plisetsky is. He isn’t even paying attention, he’s been glued to his phone since they came down to the basement. Dio is generally quiet without his twin.

And Otabek is supposed to be watching, because he himself had turned it to the Grand Prix Final of Figure Skating. Uncle Ali had called from the adjacent laundry room, _’Let him watch it Dio, you know it shoulda been Otabek over there in Spain!’_

There’s a dart board set up in a corner of the basement, and the words had hit him in the chest like one of the practice darts with the soft, plastic ends. Not enough to hurt, but it gave him a jolt. He didn’t expect the feeling to come. He had made a committment to watch, though, and so here he was.

He knows Uncle Ali didn’t mean _shoulda_ in the way he says _coulda shoulda woulda!_ and hiccups with laughter when the twins or Alia complain. He didn’t use it like he does when he watches his games on Monday nights with Alexei and Vadim and yells in English, as though talking to the coaches themselves through the television. 

He means that he supports Otabek, and that he thinks of Otabek as just as good as all those slender and graceful boys in Russia and Japan and Canada, and the simple _shoulda been Otabek_ was the way that he expressed it.

But it still reminds him that something, _the move or the culture shock or the the way his body couldn’t just move from one thing to the next without concentrating on it too hard and panicking at the last second and stepping out of a jump _, something was the reason he didn’t qualify for the Junior Grand Prix Final.__

Otabek’s father had sent him an e-mail, _‘Heard about JGP. Trust you’ll work hard for next season. If school is taking up your time, we can arrange for a tutor from the college. Let me know.’_ Mother must have told him that he didn’t make it to the Final.

If he doesn’t look up now, he’ll miss him. Otabek looks up.

He only catches Yuri for a second before the camera cuts to Viktor Nikiforov warming up in costume on the ice. Yuri Plisetsky sits in a straddle split with his head bowed over his phone. His team Russia jacket is too big, and pools on the floor behind him. His hair is shorter, and in a bowl cut, falling forward to obscure his eyes.

Otabek feels his own face heat up. He’ll forget about Yuri Plisetsky for six or eight months. Then as he drifts off to sleep in his lace-and-floral guest bed, those pale eyes will come swimming into his consciousness, and he’s thirteen again and in the hot, bright studio in St. Petersburg. He can practically smell the resin and sweat and the senior helper Anita’s heady drugstore perfume.

He can feel the strain of his hamstrings, the way his leg shakes under him and his sweaty palm slipping on the barre. He had been taller than the other boys, a first, but only because they were all younger. He had felt ashamed to be put into the younger class, and ashamed that he couldn’t even keep up with them.

Otabek had stumbled and hopped on one foot, struggling to regain his balance, and Yuri Plisetsky’s eyes had swiveled to him. He had looked right through him, right through the boy behind him, right through the wall. That gaze burned Otabek in passing and came back to him like an ache when the conditions were just right. His first coach in Kazakhstan had an old knee injury, and on rainy days he would swear and putter off to the office to get his brace, complaining that the knee was _acting up_.

That’s how Otabek felt when he thought about Yuri Plisetsky. Like some muscle just above his stomach was _acting up_ , and in its wake it left him feeling like when you don’t have your skate guards on all the way and take a step and stumble. That aftershock that takes a minute to go away, right at the top of your stomach.

Yuri Plisetsky had been strong and quiet and _perfect_. He ate and changed and got his shoes on faster than the other boys, not joining in the chatter and gossip of the cafeteria and locker room. He stretched staring at the floor and moving from one position to the next with robotic efficiency, like he was made of wires and rods rather than flesh and bone. His twirls and leaps were spring-loaded, his little legs never shaking or moving a millimeter out of form. 

On the first day Otabek had joined the younger class, one of the helpers had pulled Yuri in front of the other boys and bent him in half, this way and that like a ragdoll, to show proper stretching form. He had stared impassively at the floor as his legs were pulled into an over-split, had bent his foot into a perfect arch when he was told to point his toes.

Yuri Plisetsky had been mostly silent, flitting from one lesson to the next in-between the groups and cliques that formed over the two weeks. Otabek had been slower, unable to keep up and ending up in-between as well. But, somehow, they were not able to meet.

“Man, I bet that Victor gets all kind of ass.” Dio is watching the screen adamantly now, phone forgotten in his lap. “He’s been to the Olympics before, right?”

“He won the gold for men’s singles.” Otabek says, feeling his heartbeat recede from his throat.

“Gotta get a lot of ass.” Dio concludes, and turns back to his phone.

 

Viktor Nikiforov wins another gold medal, and Otabek doesn’t see Yuri Plisetsky again for another year.

 

As he lays under the heavy duvet in the guest room, Otabek thinks, _It’s not a crush._ He’s had crushes before, on girls in school and at the rink. He dreams about the girls he has crushes on. He thinks about wrapping his hands around their soft waists and how they would feel on his lap and how they would taste. Thinking about Yuri Plisetsky doesn’t make his dick hard and his chest feel heavy. But he thinks of him often, in the moments between waking and falling asleep.

* * *

Otabek sees Yuri in snapshots. An article in a copy of _International Figure Skating_ Mr. Leroy has stuck in between the seat and the middle console in the Suburban paints Yuri Plisetsky as:

_...not the next Viktor Nikiforov, but rather a powerful foil to Russia’s prince of the ice. The raw talent and strength are there. However, where Nikiforov is elegance and charisma, the perfect gentlemen on and off the ice, young Plisetsky is the essence of teenage stubbornness and woe the minute he steps into his guards and trudges past coach Yakov Feltsman. His Biellman is pure grace most coaches can only conjure in their dreams, and his scowl when facing the press is something of most coaches’ nightmares._

“He’s gonna break his leg and be out by sixteen.” says Jean around a granola bar, his seatbelt pressing into his neck as he cranes it to look over at the magazine in Otabek’s hands. “That’s what maman says, anyway. He’s been trying quads and stuff in competition.”

The article overlays a blown-up photo of Yuri in St. Petersburg. He’s holding onto the low wall of the rink with one hand while the other lifts his foot high above his head in a perfect vertical split. His face is turned up to where his hand snakes around the arch of his bare foot. The picture has been taken from a dramatic angle, as though the photographer was laying on the floor. It is reminiscent of many, many other editorials Otabek has seen in the West focusing on the rigorous training and seemingly inhuman physicality of Russian athletes. 

Leo was included in an article in the same magazine a year before, _The Kids in America: Ten Juniors to Look Out For_. His photo had been of him sitting on the steps outside of his high school with friends, sharing earphones and pointing at the screen of his phone and laughing. A perfectly frozen moment encapsulating American Boyhood. Fourteen years old, Yuri Plisetsky’s face is angled so far into the fluorescent glare of the ceiling lights it cannot be seen, his body stretching to its limits.

Mr. Leroy starts in on Jean about his own quads, calling back in French while Jean retorts stubbornly in English. Otabek tucks the magazine into the pocket at the back of the driver’s seat and settles to look out the window at the city passing by. The article’s study of Yuri’s personality is close to meaningless. Otabek knows intimately how even sports media is not above creating a persona more dramatic, more wholesome, more turbulent, more _interesting_ when the real thing doesn’t suffice.

At the rink, when the other boys have left the locker room to warm up, Otabek lingers on a bench and opens the Twitter app that Leo convinced him to install a few weeks before. He had made an account, but only had three followers: Leo, Jean, and the ISU. He searches, and sure enough, an account with the little check next to it, _yuri_plisetsky_ , comes up immediately. 

It isn’t private. His profile picture appears to be a selfie taken in a standing mirror. He’s wearing mostly black, has sunglasses on, and is using the hand not holding the camera to give the middle finger. He isn’t smiling. His information reads, in both Russian and English, _yuri plisetsky official twitter account. i like skating and cats. that’s about it!_ Otabek remembers again that Yuri is fourteen.

Otabek scrolls down. Yuri’s most recent tweet was forty minutes ago, and is about how he’s hungry and can’t decide between _shit borscht and shit sandwich_ from the rink canteen. It has over two thousand likes. He scrolls a bit more, and sees a picture of a fluffy cat stretched across purple and black checkered bedsheets. Otabek considers, for a second, following Yuri Plisetsky. He certainly wouldn’t notice, somebody with over fifty thousand followers.

He closes the app and puts his phone in his locker and heads out to the ice. 

After practice, back in the Suburban and being carted off to school, Isabella texts him about a party on Saturday. _It’s with the student council nerds. Keep me company, Otabek?_

He forgets about Yuri Plisetsky for a time.

* * *

Seven months later Otabek watches Yuri’s short program at the Rostelecom Cup from his laptop in bed. Yuri’s hair is longer, it almost reaches his chin and fans in a burst of gold when he spins in the air. His skating is liquid perfection. Otabek pauses the video at closeups and marvels to find he maintains a ballerino’s port de bras even in every stage of his jumps; one could take a picture at any random moment, and use it in an instructional presentation. 

The camera closes in on his face as he strikes his finishing pose. It’s lost most of the roundness of boyhood, and his sharp nose and cheekbones are more apparent. He’s flushed, hair sticking to his damp temples, but his eyes are the same. He stares through the crowd.

Otabek feels the back of his neck prickle. Although he is alone in the dark room, he has an inexplicable sinking in his stomach, as if he’d been caught looking at something dirty. He exits out of the stream, clicks Yuri’s face off of his screen. 

Before he sleeps, he wonders if they’ll be placed together at the Cup of China or NHK. If they were to meet, what would Otabek say? Thinking about it makes Otabek’s stomach turn to bile. He doesn’t know anything about Yuri Plisetsky, really. Jean is at Rostelecom, perhaps he’s met Yuri. All it would take is a message, _just saw plisetsky’s sp. have you met him? was he a ‘little shit’?_ Jean had called him a “little shit” offhandedly while reading off the assignments on the day they came out. Or he could ask him in person next week. 

He knows, somehow, that he _can’t_ ask. The idea fills him with even more dread. As if in asking about Yuri some gross, shameful secret would come out of his mouth instead. There is no reason for it, and yet, the feeling is overwhelming.

In the morning, Otabek’s stomach is fine, and he doesn’t remember to ask Jean about Yuri Plisetsky. He does not compete with Yuri Plisetsky that year, either.

* * *

_i just ran into like all the russians at the hotel. mila babacheva winked at me lol._

Otabek waits for Jean to type more.

Fuck it. He could have trained with some of them, he has an excuse.

_who else was there?_

_victor, georgi popo, popo’s gf, yulia, yuri pliswhatever, their coach_  
_god i hate victor nikiforov_  
_and yuri he’s a brat_  
_i’m gonna kick victor’s ass tmrw. can’t wait._

Otabek chews his lip. Alright.

_i heard victor is going to retire after this._  
_that’d be a shame jean_

_yeah, a shame when i beat his old ass!_

In a way, Otabek can understand Jean’s ire for Nikiforov. He has never had a real conversation with the man, but has seen him in passing at a few competitions, and has heard a lot. While many of the international skaters seem to find Eastern Europeans somewhat cold in general, Victor’s personality is a shifting enigma even to his countrymen. Otabek had seen Victor pull strangers into a hug for a picture and snap things at others that would make Putin himself blush in the same day.

Jean’s father has a saying that he likes to recite when Jean starts in about other skaters in his presence. _’Make sure to taste your words before you spit them out.’_ He says it in French and again in English for Otabek, even though he knows it’s mostly for Jean’s benefit. While they drive to the airport, he makes Jean repeat and repeat his responses to questions about his programs, his season, next season, his future. Jean spends his Saturday nights doing homework for his honors classes, Sundays at church and then volunteering or at the rink. He’s in several local television commercials. He visits Elementary schools on field days. One misplaced comment could mean more than a lecture from his father.

Victor seems to float through press junkets and Olympic interviews, commenting on people and skating as though he’s sitting in a bar with a curious date and not in a room full of cameras and lights. He certainly does _not_ taste his words before spitting them out, and Otabek knows it bothers Jean. It bothers him that Victor was hanging out on yachts and being photographed at music festivals when he was Jean’s age, and medaling at Turin in the same season.

Otabek can understand Jean’s annoyance, but he cannot feel it in the same way. He has also heard whispers, comments made in locker rooms and during lunches from Russian skaters. About Victor Nikiforov collapsing during practice because he hasn’t slept in a week. About Victor Nikiforov having his stomach pumped after failing to medal during a rare bad year. And other things that he doesn’t think he believes.

Victor wins this competition, of course. Christophe Giacometti takes silver, and Jean comes in third. He does not look devastated, all of his teeth showing as he waves to the camera in the kiss and cry. He does not respond to Otabek’s congratulatory text, though.

Yuri takes the gold in Juniors, and Yakov Feltsman announces that he will compete in the senior division immediately starting next season. While Otabek has always seen skating as a struggle to overcome, sees himself in constant discord with what he wants to achieve and the limitations of his body and his talent, it seems to him that Yuri Plisetsky simply moves forward restricted only by age and the arbitrary regulations imposed upon the sport. Of course Yuri would move on to Seniors, he’s going to be fifteen years old and is therefore finished with Juniors.

* * *

During a chance free Sunday in September, Otabek had spent four hours talking with Anora over Skype. They talked about Almaty, and what’s changed. 

Otabek’s time in Canada, and in the U.S. before that, had certainly been invaluable. He had trained in Olympic-level facilities, had skated alongside people who allowed him to see where he fell short, and where he excelled.

He had been away from Kazakhstan for so long. When he visits during summers, he feels like a foreigner in his own country. His friends are difficult to keep. He had moved away at fourteen, and when the others had started secondary school, they found their niches and split apart. He had returned the next summer to find himself mentally a year in the past, and yearning to return to the friends he had known before moving. The next year had been the same. And the year after that.

Next fall, Otabek will be eighteen. Anora had just moved back from Astana, having finished her Masters. Mother helped her get a job at the university. Mother says that Erik recommends a Russian coach named Vladimir, who is more than willing to move to coach Otabek.

Otabek may feel like a foreigner in his own country, but he feels it doubly so in North America. _So...are people from Kazakhstan Asian?_ Half of his classmates at school think he’s Russian. He likes the older Uzbek couple who host him. But his room is sparse, barely the room of a resident. He’s been a guest for three years.

Otabek places second at Worlds. He sits next to Victor Nikiforov at the press conference, and announces that he will move back to Almaty for the following season. Afterward, when he checks his phone, he has twelve messages from Jean, eight from Leo, and his mother has sent him an e-mail. He supposes he should have at least told Jean and Leo. His mother’s e-mail asks when he’s expecting to arrive, and if he is shipping anything back ahead of time (a waste of text, as he has nothing.) He figures Anora watched the press conference.

And so, Otabek goes back home, to begin again.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay. Have a title change and a new chapter!

Yuri has been abroad many times before.

He remembers being eight years old, and going to a print shop with Mama to have his photo taken for his passport. He was going to go to a competition in Helsinki. Yuri didn’t know much about Finland, other than Moomin. His coach at the local rink in Moscow had told him that it would be good for _exposure_ , but at the time he didn’t know what that meant. He just knew the rich kids in his class were going. 

At dinner a few nights before Mama had told him there was a Moomin Village theme park outside of Helsinki, and they could go afterwards if he wanted. Yuri had felt a burst of excitement in his stomach, but didn’t want to show it, so he just shrugged and went back to mixing together his mashed potatoes and peas. Mama and Anton were bringing him just for the competition and probably didn’t really want to go to Moomin Village, and he didn’t want to _jinx_ it. _Jinx_ was a word he had heard his classmates say when they were joking around. Yuri thought that it could be used when one wasn’t joking around, too.

The print shop was over by where Anton worked and the whole store smelled like hot ink. Mama came here to pick up her photos when Yuri was very little. He could remember sitting in the back of Grandpa’s car and Mama handing him back the envelope and telling him to choose his favorite. He never liked Mama’s pictures much; they didn’t look like her. Her skin was always darker than it should be and her cheeks had weird shadows, like she was sucking up a milkshake. He always chose the ones where she was wearing her own clothes, or where she was smiling.

He could remember looking at all of the office supplies in the front while waiting for the passport photo to be ready. There were pens with little tabs you could push down to make then write in a different color, and erasable pens, and glitter pens in metallic shades. Mama was in a really good mood, and bought him a pack of glitter pens and a strawberry milk out of the refrigerated case next to the register. When he got his photo he was surprised, because it didn’t look like him. His cheeks were all blotchy-red and his eyes were black, not their normal pale green. Mama said that was normal. And besides, no-one would see it but the people at the airport.

Yuri can’t remember much about the actual competition in Helsinki. What he can remember is hearing kids talking in English and French and all kinds of languages in the lobby and during warmups. A Canadian boy cheerfully said _‘Good morning!’_ to him in the hotel lobby, and he had replied _‘Thank you.’_ Another girl from his rink, Nadezhda, was there too, but she was snobby and Yuri didn’t like hanging out with her much, so he didn’t. 

He recalls mostly being in a sour mood because even though he tried really hard not to _jinx_ things, they still somehow turned out that way, and he _cried._ The morning of the competition at breakfast Anton off-handedly mentioned that he needed to get back to Moscow the next day, so (of course) they wouldn’t have time to go to Moomin Village. Yuri had watched his oatmeal with extra sugar and cinnamon from the breakfast bar swim in front of him and tried his hardest to not let tears spill over. He knew it wasn’t fair to complain, since they had come all this way just for his competition in the first place. And, actually, he didn’t even want to see Moomin Village very much. He was angry that he was crying.

His mother had told him, when they were walking into the rink and Anton was parking the car, _’I’m so sorry Yurotchka, let’s do something fun together when we get back home.’_

_’Moomin’s for babies, anyway.’_ Yuri had grumbled.

He had taken first place in the competition that day. He wondered, as he barely managed to land an extra double axel at the end, if jinxes could ever be reversed. 

* * *

Very soon after that Anton left. Mama became tired and stayed in bed for two months. Yuri learned how to use the can opener to make tuna and crackers, and then how to boil water for ramen noodles, and then how to make chicken soup. Anton never let him touch the dial on the wall by the bathroom, but after he saw his own breath upon waking one morning in December, he pulled a chair from the bedroom and carefully turned it until he heard the furnace click on. Mama hummed a thank-you from under her pile of covers when he told her. He wondered if she ate lunch while he was at school. Sometimes late at night she would get up and have friends over, Yuri could hear them talking in the kitchen. Sometimes Mama went out with them for a whole day and then she got in bed again.

Grandpa would often come into the apartment after bringing Yuri from practice and talk to Mama in her bedroom. After awhile, they moved into the old house with Grandpa. But before that was a cold, hungry time.

Yuri watched TV a lot. He could watch whenever he wanted. There were also some DVDs in the living room. He especially liked the American ones with singing and dancing, _Grease_ and _Moulin Rouge!_ and _Footloose _. Mama liked those kind of movies too. He remembered her dancing with him in front of the TV when he was littler.__

* * *

_  
_

__After it happened, moving to St. Petersburg was not hard. Yuri didn’t want to be at his old school, where the kids whispered and the teachers talked to him as if he were made of glass. He didn’t want to be at his rink, where the other skater’s mothers had started talking to him, inviting him over for tea as though he was friends with their stuck-up brats._ _

__He wanted to be with Grandpa, who rubbed his back and made a big pot of stew on the weekends and smelled like sweet pipe tobacco. But being with Grandpa meant going to school and the old rink and having sympathy drip on him like molasses. Yuri couldn’t have everything._ _

__The day before he left, Yuri opened the door of Grandpa’s car to find a brown box with holes in the top sitting in the passenger seat._ _

__“You remember Mr. Gromov? You’ve met him. He has a litter of Persians, and a litter of these Ragdolls. The Persians are white as snow and pedigree, but I just can’t get over those smushed-in little faces...anyway, this was the only tom in the other litter.”_ _

__The little cream-and-chocolate kitten vibrates in the corner of the box, and Yuri doesn’t know what to say as he carefully picks the it up and holds it under his chin._ _

__“I thought you might want a friend in Moscow, Yurotchka.”_ _

__By that night Yuri’s gotten Potya to eat his smelly food from a little saucer and curl up on his chest, rumbling like an engine. He holds him on his lap for the whole ride to Moscow the next day._ _

* * *

_  
_

__After gaining sponsorship, Yuri traveled often for events. But was always with coaches and fellow skaters, and most of his time had been split between hotels and rinks. His tickets were purchased by Ivan, and later Yakov, and he only had to worry about pocket money._ _

__“Hag,” Yuri starts, then remembers that he’s going to have to butter her up, “Mila.”_ _

__“Ye-es, Yurotchka?” Mila sets her phone on the bed, camera app still open, and turns to smile obnoxiously at Yuri. She’s wearing lipstick, but has hours worth of homework piled on the bed._ _

__“Shut the fuck up. Don’t fucking call me...” Yuri bristles, then snaps his mouth shut. He needs to focus on hitting all his points in time. “So, I need a favor.”_ _

__“Oh yeah?” Mila rolls over on the bed and pulls a pillow up to her chest. “Do you like someone?”_ _

__“What? No! Jesus. I need you to buy me a plane ticket to Japan. I’ll pay you, tonight if you want.”_ _

__Mila’s eyes go wide, and then narrow._ _

__“You’re going after him.”_ _

__“He fucking lied to me!” Yuri leans against the door and crosses his arms. Fuck it, he’s pissed. “He lied and ran off to like, get laid or whatever. And Yakov is just like, _‘That’s Vitya!’_ It’s fucking unfair, the way he just fucks around!”_ _

__“Yeah, it was shitty. Victor’s shitty.” Mila says. She picks at a pill on her bedspread. “But you can’t just like, go to another country by yourself.”_ _

__“You’ve been to Japan. They let little kids ride the train to school and shit. It’s like, an exception.”_ _

__Mila raises her eyebrows. Her hand starts for her phone. Yuri’s time is running out._ _

__“He just...he needs to know he can’t just _do_ this kinda shit. Just because he’s...I don’t know… _Victor_ …” Yuri feels a brush against his leg, and looks down to see Potya standing in the doorway warily. The cat looks up at him, blinks, and sniffs at the air, testing this new area of the house. It isn’t often that Yuri comes into Mila’s room, and her hair dryer usually keeps the cat away._ _

__It _is_ crazy. But Yuri chasing Victor is as inevitable as Victor chasing Katsuki. As inevitable as Victor snapping and throwing his career away over someone who gave him attention at a party. As inevitable as him letting Yuri down._ _

__On the bed, Mila sighs._ _

__She must’ve Victor in the hotel lobby the morning after the banquet in Sochi. It was as if he had forgotten some part of himself up in his room, or in the banquet hall, or in Katsuki’s fucking room. Maybe something deep inside him had cracked, finally. Yuri had known it was over. Victor was going to break all the promises he had ever made over a boy, because the wants and needs of other people were as substantial as dust to him. Motes floating around his head to brush away idly._ _

__And he always got away with it._ _

__The vibrating tension begins to subside in Yuri’s chest. He opens his mouth to tell Mila all of this, just like he wanted to._ _

__“You’re sure you can afford it?” she says, before he can begin._ _

__“Aeroflot’s cheap to Tokyo, I already looked. They have train discounts for tourists.” Yuri says in one breath._ _

__Mila makes a show of heaving herself upright. Yuri’s heart thuds in his chest. Potya _murrs_ next to him._ _

__“Can you pay me tomorrow?” She takes her wallet from her purse and pops the metal clasp._ _

__“I can pay you tonight. Like, now.”_ _

__Mila settles back onto the bed and extracts a shiny, barely-used credit card from her purse and her Macbook from the folds of her duvet. Like that._ _

__“Which airport?”_ _

* * *

_  
_

__The first time Yuri had seen Yuuri Katsuki, he was in a mood already, and Katsuki was the final straw to tip it from sour to pissed._ _

__He had already spent fifty minutes wandering around the rink in Sochi searching for Victor, wasting his goddamn precious time before his last Grand Prix Final in the Junior level. It was Yakov’s fault, actually. The geezer had decided to hand the hotel room keys over to Victor to dispense to the rest of the team, probably because Victor was standing next to him when he checked in and he mistook him for someone with half a brain in a senile moment. Victor had given out keys to the people he’d happened to run into, and had promptly forgot about Yuri and fucked off to the rink._ _

__Yuri had had to open his suitcase in the hotel lobby, throw half his shit out, extract his practice shit, and catch a cab to the rink. He had called Yakov in desperation. _Vitya has the keys. Oh...that’s right,_ Vitya _has them…’_ Yuri had thought he heard something like contrition in Yakov’s voice. Maybe._ _

__He finally tracked Victor down not gliding on the rink with the other early arrivals, but high above near the back of the stands. Him and Christophe Giacometti were taking turns peering down at the other skaters with a pair of binoculars and giggling like a pair of fucking schoolgirls. Or perverted old men._ _

__“Oi! Check your fucking phone once in awhile, asshole!” Yuri had called up as he reached the balcony. Christophe had quipped something in French, and Victor had yelped with laughter, and Yuri had decided that his plan to also ask Victor to oversee his free skate routine was out the window._ _

__“Look at that. Such language in front of your elders. _Un petit chat en colère!_ ” said Christophe, leaning back with a smirk._ _

__Victor laughed and started yammering to him in French, shutting Yuri out. He felt something begin to burn deep in his chest, and clenched his fists. He took a deep breath. It wasn’t worth it. Victor wasn’t worth it, anymore._ _

__And it wasn’t that he hated Christophe Giacometti. He was friendly, at least, and Mila said he was funny on Twitter. And he must work his ass off to maintain flexibility with that build. When Yuri had first come to train under Yakov, he had known Chris as ‘Victor’s friend’, which largely meant the only foreigner Victor hung out with repeatedly at skating events. Chris had even come to visit Victor in St. Petersburg. He had shown up to the rink smelling like too much cologne and with chocolates for the girls. There was lots of talk about whether or not they were dating, which Victor reveled in maintaining an air of aloofness over._ _

__It was that whenever him and Victor got together they seemed to toss all notions of professionalism that they were expected to uphold as world-class athletes. They fucked off to nightclubs, stayed up all night drinking, ate burgers and uploaded questionable pictures to social media. The summer after Yuri came, Victor had disappeared with Chris to some resort in Europe for over a month after Worlds. He gave Yuri a pair of too-big knockoff Gucci sunglasses as a souvenir upon his return._ _

__If Yakov was thankful for Chris befriending Victor, he had yet to express it, and likely never would._ _

___“I’m still fucking here.”_ _ _

__“Yuri, Yuri, come take a look. We’re having a little tiff.” Victor was using English for Chris, and Yuri couldn’t help but actually roll his eyes. “Who’s cuter, Katsuki or Chulanont?”_ _

__“You’re fucking dumb. Give me my key.”_ _

__“Katsuki’s got a nice ass. I’ll give you that. But get him to say more than five words in a conversation. You need _personality_ , and Phichit’s a riot.” Christophe had finished with a smirk, showing Victor the screen of his phone. _ _

__Yuri continued to hover above them, ire crackling like static in the air. Finally, with a dramatic sigh, Victor finally started digging in his wallet for the keys._ _

__“Don’t watch me, fucking couple of perverts.” Yuri had called over his shoulder as he plodded down the concrete steps._ _

__He had spotted Katsuki stopping for a drink as he was heading for the gate. Katsuki had done one of those Japanese nods, and turned to skate back to the center. Yuri had _had_ to watch his ass all the way, which made him feel something other than _annoyed_._ _

__Yuri had figured that if his practice routine that day was judged, he would have scored higher than the actual competition._ _

__That night Yuri had Googled _Yuuri Katsuki._ He had just turned twenty-two. He was the top-ranked skater in Japan. He went to school in the U.S.. He had performance anxiety. _Special Skill: Dieting.__ _

___We’re figure skaters. Our fucking lives are dieting. Dumbass._ _ _

__After hastily wiping his hand with a flimsy tissue from the hotel nightstand, Yuri had turned and pressed his face into the pillow. He didn’t want to do it, not tonight when he was supposed to be running through his routine until he fell asleep. He didn’t want to feel this way. He hated it._ _

__

__The next day he spoke to Yuuri Katsuki for the first time. Afterwards, he marched himself up the bleachers to the same spot Victor and Chris were at the day before, and spent most of the Women’s short program staring at his shoes. He couldn’t cry, and he couldn’t talk to anyone. He tried to reason with himself that it had been adrenaline, or something. When he had won his first Junior Grand Prix, he had gotten so angry about crying on the ice that he had punched the bench in the kiss and cry. In rare a moment of tenderness, Yakov had assured him that everyone reacts to the adrenaline of a performance differently, and often in ways they didn’t expect. His hand was a sickly green-yellow for a week._ _

__He had finally supposed that Yuuri Katsuki would at least avoid him now, if he didn’t retire._ _

* * *

_  
_

__Of course, he was wrong. It came back to bite him. Yuuri came back to bite him._ _

__In retrospect, when Yuri thinks about his encounters with Yuuri Katsuki in Sochi, he supposes that he did Yuuri a favor by confronting him in the toilet. If Yuuri hadn’t been so rattled, he would _not_ have gotten fucking drunk at the banquet. He would _not_ have spoken to Victor or anyone but his noisy coach. He would _not_ have started this whole damn Thing. _ _

__He would have passed out quietly in his room, left quietly the next day._ _

__Victor and Chris would have likely skipped out by nine to bigger and better things. Victor  
_knows_ people all over, even if they aren’t really his friends. Yuri would have had his two glasses of non-alcoholic champagne, listened to Mila brag about how she can hold her booze while stumbling in heels on her second glass of the real stuff, and ended up back in his room wired from sugar and unable to sleep._ _

__

__“Hey. HEY. Yuri Plis- _ET_ -sky. Yeah. You...you little... _f-fuck!_ ”_ _

__There was a moment, stumbling over his own choice of obscenity, when Katsuki had looked like he was unsure of his actions. Like it wasn’t the first time he had said that word, but it definitely was the first time he had hollered it across a crowded banquet hall at a gala event full of high-profile athletes and sponsors._ _

__Yuri couldn’t remember how he responded, or if he did at all. He had found himself mired somewhere between shock, amusement, and disgust._ _

__“You think you’re such a little badass. Look at your...hair and all that. Your fuckin’ little suit.” Yuuri had slurred, attempting to narrow his eyes in a menacing scowl. “Dance me! I’m a good dancer!”_ _

__Mila (the bitch) had practically thrown Yuri onto the dance floor, and his only consolation that night was that no-one was likely to remember his part in what followed._ _

__He had seen Victor skip into view, phone held in front of him and eyes following Katsuki like a starving man watches a plate of food. Yuri had never seen Victor appear that interested in anything in his life. Victor was very good at faking looks of sorrow or glee in performances, and at feigning excitement at press conferences and in front of fans. Other than that, if one looked close enough, they could see that he was often _indifferent.__ _

__The next morning, Victor had been absent at breakfast. He had joined the group in the lobby right before departing. He said very little, and stayed glued to his phone for the duration of the flight back to St. Petersburg. Yuri didn’t know who to be more pissed at, Katsuki for morphing into Drunk Katsuki or Victor for latching on to that mess._ _

__For the first few weeks, talking to Victor had been akin to speaking through a shoddy connection. Victor had finally been zapped out of reality. He came to practice and rehearsed his stupid _Stay Close to Me_ routine with a blank face, and Yakov called to him _you better come back down to earth before Worlds, boy!_ Yuri had thought, _he’s never been to Earth, old man._ lol  <3_ _

__Then, apparently, Katsuki didn’t text back or whatever, because things went back to the way they were, more or less._ _

__Until March._ _

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on tumblr and twitter, topdollarwitch. fic posting tumblr: witchsvoid


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